#cloud of unknowing

[wrldturbine]

patchouli unknowing

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"For silence is not God, nor speaking; fasting is not God, nor eating; solitude is not God, nor company; nor any other pair of opposites. He is hidden between them, and cannot be found by anything your soul does, but only by the love of your heart. He cannot be known by reason, he cannot be thought, caught, or sought by understanding."

~ The Cloud of unknowing

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"The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The underlying message of this work suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of "unknowing", at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God."

(From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing)

Image: The first page of the manuscript...

[Thanks to Ian Sanders]

[santmat]

Choosing Your Own Mantra (Prayer Word, Sacred Name) According to the Cloud of Unknowing In mystic traditions sacred names vary from group to group. The Sethians had five very special sacred names that are mentioned in several Gnostic Nag Hammadi texts. As for how those names were applied, or what contemplative practices were used in the various Gnostic schools of spirituality, were mostly kept secret between master and disciple, reserved for one's initiation into the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. Thus it's a matter of speculation what exactly were the methods of spiritual practice used in the authentic historic Valentinianism of the early centuries C.E., Sethianism, among the followers of Basilides, Marcion, etc… Those medieval Christian mystical movements one might say reinvented versions of Gnostic interior life for their time and also generated much literature. Consulting with those sources my help fill in some of the lacuna, the missing elements, with similar or parallel ideas about spiritual practice. The 14th century classic, The Cloud of Unknowing "is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer." (Wikipedia entry for Cloud of Unknowing) "And if you desire to have this aim concentrated and expressed in one word in order that you may be better able to grasp it, take but one short word of a single syllable. This is better than two, for the shorter it is the better it accords with the work of the spirit. Such a word is the word GOD or the word LOVE. Choose whichever one you prefer, or, if you like, choose another that suits your taste, provided that it is of one syllable. And clasp this word tightly in your heart so that it never leaves it no matter what may happen." "And why does it pierce heaven, this little short prayer of one small syllable? Surely because it is prayed with a full spirit, in the height and in the depth, in the length and in the breadth of the spirit of him who prays it. It is in the height, for it is with all the power of the spirit. It is in the depth, for in this one little syllable all the knowledge of the spirit is contained." -- The Cloud of Unknowing: A New Translation: https://archive.org/details/cloudofunknowing0000unse_g4b4/page/150/mode/2up?q=syllable+

[improvisedliturgy]

But now you will ask me, 'How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?' and I cannot answer you except to say 'I do not know!' For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of unknowing where I want you to be! For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them - yes, even the very works of God himself - yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? Because he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may he good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.

The Cloud of Unknowing ch. 6

[gorillaz-girl]

[fierysword]

Dark-night spirituality is found in most traditions that venerate the Black Goddess, not because she is sinister or evil, but because she is the powerhouse from which our spirituality is fuelled. lt is a way of unknowing, of darkness and uncertainty. Yet the experience obtained by this path is one of illumination, when the sun shines at midnight. This is the kindling of Sophia, who is the transcendent pole of the  Black Goddess, though because of our dualistic conditioning, finding the connection between the two may take a long time.

Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God by Caitlin Matthews

[lovestereo]

Visit Original Link

[eelhound]

"What might it mean as an adult to encounter the ordinary world as if for the first time? To enter The Cloud of Unknowing, The Great Mystery, where one is no longer 'troubled about many things'?

In Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, Annie Dillard describes a remarkable experience that hints at this quality of being, of encountering the ordinary world as a place of miracle and wonder. She had been reading Space and Sight, a book about the era of pioneering cataract surgeries. Many of these operations were performed on people who had been blind from birth and were now able to see for the first time. One girl in particular captured Dillard’s imagination. When the girl’s bandages were removed, she was led into a garden and saw a tree for the first time. All her life she had known trees only by touching them or hearing them or smelling them. But now she was able to see what she described as 'the tree with the lights in it.'

Dillard writes that after reading this book she became determined to see for herself the tree with the lights in it. 'It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring, for years.' She searched and searched, until, at last, she gave up trying. This is how she describes the experience:

One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all, and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The first flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The Great Mystery is blazing forth in Annie Dillard’s backyard cedar.

Experiencing the miracle of the ordinary doesn’t have to be so intense, however. In fact, such intensity is probably too much for most of us to handle. There is another way.

There is a poem by the Taoist poet T’ao Ch’ien, written in Chinese over 1500 years ago, that is the perfect invocation of Mary’s quiet and contemplative approach to spiritual life, which is much less dramatic than Dillard’s vision but much more enduring and every bit as profound.

T’ao Ch’ien lived during one of the most chaotic and violent periods of Chinese history. After abandoning an active life of government work in the capital where he had most certainly been cumbered by serving and troubled by many things, T’ao Ch’ien moved to a secluded farm to live a quiet life with his family. His poetry celebrates a simple life of life of pulling weeds, raising children, drinking a glass of wine, and settling into what is known in Chinese as tzu-ran: the natural, spontaneous perfection of being.

Here is his poem, Reading the Classics of Mountains and Seas (as translated by David Hinton):

It’s early summer. Everything’s lush.

Our house set deep among broad trees,

birds delight in taking refuge here.

I too love this little place. And now

the plowing and planting are finished,

I can return to my books again and read.

Our meager lane nowhere near well-worn

roads, most old friends turn back. Here,

I ladle out spring wine with pleasure,

and pick vegetables in the garden.

Coming in from the east, thin rain

arrives on a lovely breeze. My eyes

wander Tales of Emperor Mu, float along

on Mountains and Seas . . .

Look around. All time and space within

Sight — if not here, where will joy come?

So, am I suggesting that we all quit our jobs, move to the country, and take up subsistence farming? Not necessarily — though if you do, you have my blessing. But that’s not my point; nor do I think that is the import of T’ao Ch’ien’s poem. What is important is to remember that the miracle of the ordinary is as close as the cedar tree in our backyard and the stones in our driveway — if only we can learn to let go, even for a moment, of our obsession with doing, with making things happen, controlling, explaining, manipulating, thinking.

The Great Mystery is always here, waiting, if only we busy adults can find a way to remember what we so easily forget, a way to 'sit quietly at the feet of Jesus' with reverence and humility, unencumbered by serving and completely absorbed in that one needful thing.

That good part, which shall not be taken away from us."

- C. W. Huntington, Jr., from "The Miracle of the Ordinary." Tricycle, 21 December 2016.